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A display of humanity in sock drive for northern Ontario First Nation community

Behind humble shipment of hosiery heading to a northern Ontario reserve are the good intentions of a teacher, a family friend, a trucking executive and a police officer.

Jordan Doner is a science teacher at the school in Pikangikum First Nation. He and his wife Rachel inspired a family friend to collect donations of socks to be shipped to the community. Rachel is also collecting girls' prom dresses for the first graduating class in the newly built school on the reserve. (Salvatore Sacco / For The Toronto Star)

When you think about the needs of the people of the Pikangikum First Nation, many things come to mind.

A pair of socks might not be the first among them.

The community needs a stable power supply, particularly to endure the harsh northern Ontario winters. That would be a good start.

The 2,700 indigenous people who call Pikangikum home have been waiting ages for a new water system for sanitation and drinking water. Despite a decade of promises made and delayed by the federal government, they currently have to use an outdoor pumping station for drinking water.

And access to better health services and crisis counselling might be welcomed, particularly among those touched by the deaths of several young people who have taken their lives since the fall.

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But, yes, Pikangikum also needs socks. And this winter, thanks to a young Whitby couple resident in the community for several months — and an Oshawa woman who was inspired by them — they’ll be getting about 2,000 pairs.

The couple is Jordan Doner, a science teacher at the Eenchokay Birchstick School, and his wife, Rachel. They moved to Pikangikum in August after he was hired on a contract to teach at the community’s new school, built after the old school was destroyed in a 2007 fire.

The Doners say they have been thrilled by their experience thus far — by the warmth and generosity of the local population — even though the hardships of life on a northern reserve are everywhere.

“There is a laundry facility but to do laundry you have to go there and when it’s minus-30 it’s not the most convenient to get in your truck or hop on your ATV and go to a laundry facility,” said Jordan, 23. “So to have a couple of extra pairs of socks is very beneficial.”

Behind the humble shipment of hosiery that is expected to begin its journey as early as next week, there are the good intentions of a handful of random and otherwise unconnected individuals — including a trucking executive, friends of the Doners and an Ontario Provincial Police officer — whose sense of civic duty has them pulling in the same direction.

Terrol Maciver is behind an initiative collecting donated socks for the Pikangikum First Nation in northern Ontario. (Salvatore Sacco/ FOR THE TORONTO STAR)

The driving force is Terrol Maciver, an Oshawa woman who started collecting donations of socks for the homeless in 2014 in an effort to make her little corner of the world a better place.

That first year, Maciver set out to collect 2,014 pairs of socks and ended up with 5,000. Since then, her local initiative has branched out to more than a dozen other Ontario towns.

But when she heard through her church this summer that Jordan and Rachel would be moving to Pikangikum with their newborn son, Malachi, Maciver set a goal to send up 2,000 pairs of socks from the 15,000 that have so far been collected from across the province.

“Socks are the most needed and the least donated item,” Maciver said. “Everyone needs socks because they wear out. They’re as consumable as food.”

Her call for socks on the “Pairs for Pikangikum” Facebook page has resulted in deliveries arriving at the optometrist’s office where Maciver works. On other days, she has arrived home after work to find donations lying at her doorstep.

But Maciver might have been stuck with the contributions had it not been for a chance encounter with a retired trucking executive, 82-year-old Ross Mackie, in the parking lot of a local Tim Hortons. They got to talking. She mentioned that she was collecting socks. He said he could help.

Norm Mackie, president of the Oshawa-based, family-run Mackie Moving Systems, said his company will be transporting the socks on their first leg of their trip north, to Thunder Bay, in the next week or so.

Although the offer to ship the socks was a personal deal, Mackie’s company regularly helps transport donated items for free or at reduced rates through the Trucks for Change non-profit group, which was started in 2011 and is made up of 60 trucking companies and more than 20 registered charities across Canada. The organization acts like a dispatcher, putting charities in need of transport in touch with companies that have space in their trailers.

“We can’t help out every time, but we try to help when we can,” said Mackie.

Once the shipment of socks is on the truck, it will make its way to Red Lake, which is the closest community to Pikangikum that can be reached by all-weather road. Once the ice road that connects the first nations community to Red Lake has formed and solidified — letting vehicle traffic reach the reserve — the socks will complete the final leg of their journey, likely in January.

They will probably get some help along the way from OPP Sgt. Chris Amell. The co-ordinator of the federally funded crime-prevention initiative, Project Journey, is based at the provincial police detachment in Red Lake, but works closely with Pikangikum’s youth to work on community projects.

The arrival of donated goods is a perfect opportunity to pass on a message, said Amell.

“We’ll partner with anybody and we take that opportunity to get the youth to learn about community service and volunteerism and use them to help with the distribution and be part of something bigger,” he said.

Project Journey has gotten involved in the past when donated clothing has arrived in the community, such as with shipments of hockey equipment for young people. If Rachel Doner has her way, they may also be doing it in the months ahead with frilly, fancy graduation dresses.

What started with pressure from her parents to clean out her closet ahead of a move to a new home has turned into another clothing drive. This time, the goal is to ensure that the girls who will be part of the first class to graduate from Pikangikum’s newly built school can celebrate their achievement in style.

Like many of her friends back home, Rachel, 23, had several formal dresses from graduations and bridal parties that she had worn once and stuffed away in a closet, unlikely to be worn again.

For graduating students in Pikangikum, a prom dress means a four-hour drive to the closest big town, Kenora, or a pricey online purchase that cannot be tried and takes three weeks to deliver, she said.

“With a lot of my friends, we have at least four of them and it’s doesn’t really mean anything to get rid of because we’re not going to use them again. But it’s such a blessing to girls who don’t have one,” she said.

Pikangikum Chief Dean Owen and Kyle Peters, director of the Pikangikum Education Authority, did not respond to interview requests for this article.

The donations are welcomed in Pikangikum, said Jordan Doner, but the community doesn’t want peoples’ pity. If the roles were reversed — if it were Pikangikum blessed with ease and abundance and southern communities struggling — he said the people of his adopted temporary hometown wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing.

“People in Pikangikum are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. People are willing to go out of their way to help you any time. If you need a drive somewhere, they say, ‘Hey, I’ll drive you,’ even if it’s not on their way,” he said.

“The people are really thankful (for the donated items). But I think the biggest thing is they want to feel like they’re part of Canada and not forgotten about. And at the same time they want to be respected as people.”

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